Installing NGINX Ingress Controller #

This tutorial covers the installation of NGINX Ingress controller , which is an open source project made by the Kubernetes community. k0s doesn't come with an in-built Ingress controller, but it's easy to deploy NGINX Ingress as shown in this document. Other Ingress solutions can be used as well (see the links at the end of the page).

NodePort vs LoadBalancer vs Ingress controller #

Kubernetes offers multiple options for exposing services to external networks. The main options are NodePort, LoadBalancer and Ingress controller.

NodePort , as the name says, means that a port on a node is configured to route incoming requests to a certain service. The port range is limited to 30000-32767, so you cannot expose commonly used ports like 80 or 443 with NodePort.

LoadBalancer is a service, which is typically implemented by the cloud provider as an external service (with additional cost). Load balancers can also be installed internally in the Kubernetes cluster with MetalLB, which is typically used for bare-metal deployments. Load balancer provides a single IP address to access your services, which can run on multiple nodes.

Ingress controller helps to consolidate routing rules of multiple applications into one entity. Ingress controller is exposed to an external network with the help of NodePort, LoadBalancer or host network. You can also use Ingress controller to terminate TLS for your domain in one place, instead of terminating TLS for each application separately.

NGINX Ingress Controller #

NGINX Ingress Controller is a very popular Ingress for Kubernetes. In many cloud environments, it can be exposed to an external network by using the load balancer offered by the cloud provider. However, cloud load balancers are not necessary. Load balancer can also be implemented with MetalLB, which can be deployed in the same Kubernetes cluster. Another option to expose the Ingress controller to an external network is to use NodePort. The third option is to use host network. All of these alternatives are described in more detail on below, with separate examples.

Install NGINX using NodePort #

Installing NGINX using NodePort is the most simple example for Ingress Controller as we can avoid the load balancer dependency. NodePort is used for exposing the NGINX Ingress to the external network.

Install NGINX Ingress Controller (using the official manifests by the ingress-nginx project)

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v1.1.3/deploy/static/provider/baremetal/deploy.yaml
Check that the Ingress controller pods have started
kubectl get pods -n ingress-nginx
Check that you can see the NodePort service
kubectl get services -n ingress-nginx
From version v1.0.0 of the Ingress-NGINX Controller, a ingressclass object is required.
In the default installation, an ingressclass object named nginx has already been created.
$ kubectl -n ingress-nginx get ingressclasses
NAME    CONTROLLER             PARAMETERS   AGE
nginx   k8s.io/ingress-nginx   <none>       162m
If this is only instance of the Ingresss-NGINX controller, you should add the annotation ingressclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class in your ingress class:
kubectl -n ingress-nginx annotate ingressclasses nginx ingressclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class="true"
Try connecting the Ingress controller using the NodePort from the previous step (in the range of 30000-32767)
curl <worker-external-ip>:<node-port>
If you don't yet have any backend service configured, you should see "404 Not Found" from nginx. This is ok for now. If you see a response from nginx, the Ingress Controller is running and you can reach it.
Deploy a small test application (httpd web server) to verify your Ingress controller.
Create the following YAML file and name it "simple-web-server-with-ingress.yaml":
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: web
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: web-server
  namespace: web
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: web
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: web
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: httpd
        image: httpd:2.4.53-alpine
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: web-server-service
  namespace: web
spec:
  selector:
    app: web
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 5000
      targetPort: 80
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: web-server-ingress
  namespace: web
spec:
  ingressClassName: nginx
  rules:
  - host: web.example.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: web-server-service
            port:
              number: 5000
Deploy the app:
kubectl apply -f simple-web-server-with-ingress.yaml
Verify that you can access your application using the NodePort from step 3.
curl <worker-external-ip>:<node-port> -H 'Host: web.example.com'
If you are successful, you should see <html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>.
Install NGINX using LoadBalancer#
In this example you'll install NGINX Ingress controller using LoadBalancer on k0s.
Install LoadBalancer
There are two alternatives to install LoadBalancer on k0s. Follow the links in order to install LoadBalancer.
- MetalLB as a pure SW solution running internally in the k0s cluster
  - Cloud provider's load balancer running outside of the k0s cluster
Verify LoadBalancer
In order to proceed you need to have a load balancer available for the Kubernetes cluster. To verify that it's available, deploy a simple load balancer service.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: example-load-balancer
spec:
  selector:
    app: web
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 80
      targetPort: 80
  type: LoadBalancer
kubectl apply -f example-load-balancer.yaml
Then run the following command to see your LoadBalancer with an external IP address.
kubectl get service example-load-balancer
If the LoadBalancer is not available, you won't get an IP address for EXTERNAL-IP. Instead, it's <pending>. In this case you should go back to the previous step and check your load balancer availability.
If you are successful, you'll see a real IP address and you can proceed further.
You can delete the example-load-balancer:
kubectl delete -f example-load-balancer.yaml
Install NGINX Ingress Controller by following the steps in the previous chapter (step 1 to step 4).
Edit the NGINX Ingress Controller to use LoadBalancer instead of NodePort
kubectl edit service ingress-nginx-controller -n ingress-nginx
Find the spec.type field and change it from "NodePort" to "LoadBalancer".
Check that you can see the ingress-nginx-controller with type LoadBalancer.
kubectl get services -n ingress-nginx
Try connecting to the Ingress controller
If you used private IP addresses for MetalLB in step 2, you should run the following command from the local network. Use the IP address from the previous step, column EXTERNAL-IP.
curl <EXTERNAL-IP>
If you don't yet have any backend service configured, you should see "404 Not Found" from nginx. This is ok for now. If you see a response from nginx, the Ingress Controller is running and you can reach it using LoadBalancer.
Deploy a small test application (httpd web server) to verify your Ingress.
Create the YAML file "simple-web-server-with-ingress.yaml" as described in the previous chapter (step 6) and deploy it.
kubectl apply -f simple-web-server-with-ingress.yaml
Verify that you can access your application through the LoadBalancer and Ingress controller.
curl <worker-external-ip> -H 'Host: web.example.com'
If you are successful, you should see <html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>.
Install NGINX using host network#
The host network option exposes Ingress directly using the worker nodes' IP addresses. It also allows you to use ports 80 and 443. This option doesn't use any Service objects (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer) and it has the limitation that only one Ingress controller Pod may be scheduled on each cluster node.
Download the official NGINX Ingress Controller manifests:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v1.1.3/deploy/static/provider/baremetal/deploy.yaml
Edit deploy.yaml. Find the Deployment ingress-nginx-controller and enable the host network option by adding the hostNetwork line:
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      hostNetwork: true
You can also remove the Service ingress-nginx-controller completely, because it won't be needed.
Install Ingress
kubectl apply -f deploy.yaml
Try to connect to the Ingress controller, deploy a test application and verify the access. These steps are similar to the previous install methods.
Additional information#
For more information about NGINX Ingress Controller installation, take a look at the official ingress-nginx installation guide and bare-metal considerations.
Alternative examples for Ingress Controllers on k0s#
Traefik Ingress